TL; DR;
WiT community group leader Eliška Bušáková recommends to not be afraid to face challenges head on.
Intro
Hi, I’m Eliška and I like Salesforce!
How did it happen? Like most of the essential things in my life – completely by accident! After graduating with a degree in the field of Zoo rehabilitation and animal-assisted activities at the Czech University of Life Sciences, I turned my focus back to technology (to which I have always been close).
While studying Open Informatics at Czech Technical University, I browsed through IT positions, trying to find the motivation to study for the Maths analysis exam by looking at the well-paid positions :). By chance, I came across a summer school for Java programming, where I signed up without thinking. It worked, with the only difference – during the first round of interviews, the recruiters made me enthusiastic about the parallel internship – Salesforce Developer summer school.
It is just over five years since my enthusiasm and passion for this platform started and it continues to this day. Working for consulting companies, I got my hands dirty with many implementations and different products and worked for various businesses and with many people. These never-ending challenges really help to get experience quite fast. And what I love the most about that all? With every new implementation, you always use something you know well but also have to learn and apply something new.
Books
Which “professional” books have you read that you liked or would recommend others to read. Great if they are Salesforce (Developer) related but they don’t necessarily have to be.
The Pragmatic Programmer is my favourite 🙂
Courses & Events
Did you follow any online (or in person) courses? Are there any that you would recommend? Do you participate in Meetups or organised User Groups?
I love Salesforce Community Groups and being a part of a community of such kind, motivated and skilled people that are not competitive but supportive. So I am trying not to miss any Prague community events.
I am also the leader of one – Women in Tech community group. It was founded in 2019 and besides typical community events with different speakers and topics, our group is special by organizing learning programs (eg. intensive weekend courses, or two-months evening classes) for Salesforce (from platform administration or development to eg. Marketing cloud course). Courses are for women only, encouraging them to start or boost their careers, and are free of charge.
Besides community events, I always enjoy some Salesforce Days sessions, as well as courses on Focus on Force when preparing for a new certification.
Blogs
Give a shout out to any (Salesforce) Blogs that you follow are are fan of. You don’t need to be a regular reader, or maybe even just one post that may have got your attention.
Does Salesforce documentation count? 😀
I am a loyal reader of Martin Humpolec’s blog, sometimes I browse on Salesforce Ben. Otherwise, I tend to come across interesting articles based on what I’m looking for.
Socials
Do you use Social Media for your work or personal development? Which ones, how and why? Any creators that you would recommend others follow/check out?
Aside from the occasional LinkedIn procrastination, I have to say that I don’t really use this channel. I don’t even have Twitter. But my answer makes me doubt myself, so ask me again in a year :))
Forums and Discussion Channels
Where do you look for help or answers to problems you can’t solve yourself? Do you spend time answering other peoples’ questions? Where?
You have just made me think, what is the name of the forum I am a regular visitor of – after typing “how to….. in Salesforce” in google. So after 5 years I finally looked at the name. It is Salesforce Stack Exchange 🙂
GitHub
Do you use GitHub as a social platform? Or maybe follow some open-source repos that are interesting and relevant?
I follow and use some handsome repositories – mainly to use the package or to follow updates. To name a few of the most interesting: lwc-utils, sfdx-git-delta and forcedotcom/cli for sfdx release notes.
IDE and Extensions
What’s your setup? Specifically when doing Salesforce Development work. Any features or extensions you would recommend.
I am a steady user of IntelliJ IDEA with Illuminated cloud plugin. I admit that I’m not a typical enthusiast of dev toys, but I believe that they can make work a lot easier. As much as I like to learn new things, I’m a bit conservative when it comes to tools I work with. Or at least I’m not a trailblazer.
Other Tools
Any other software that you can’t do without?
Apart from Excel and Dataloader? 🙂
Talking about the chrome extensions, I cannot not live without Salesforce Inspector and Salesforce DevTools.
I would also like to mention sforgcompare – a useful heroku app.
Anything Else
Anything else you wanna add that doesn’t fit above? What else do you do or use to be a good Salesforce Developer?
I’m one of those multipurpose people who like to program, design the solution or technical architecture, or talk to the business about what they actually want. Whatever one does, it is important that they want to do it well. It must be our own inner motivation that drives us to do our best. We must search for resources to help us and if we can, always have at least one senior friend by our side from whom we can learn. And finally, we should not be afraid and go head first into new challenges. Be they programming ones or completely different.
Well, that’s what I try to do 🙂
Tabs of Spaces
For a bit of light entertainment, my favourite “controversial” topic. What’s your preference? Do you care? I love to pretend to care more than I do, though I am genuinely looking for someone to convince me my choice is wrong.
I prefer to focus on the visible part of the code 🙂 So as long as the team uses the same formatter, I really do not care.